


The View Through Roots

by epiphanaea (Epiphanaea)



Category: Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
Genre: Broken Warder Bond, Depression, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Illness, Recovery, The broken warder bond is basically metaphysically induced depression, discussion of past sexual abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:35:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23857702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Epiphanaea/pseuds/epiphanaea
Summary: Takes place during 'The Path of Daggers' - on the subject of Myrelle.  See notes for warnings.
Relationships: Nynaeve al'Meara/Lan Mandragoran
Comments: 5
Kudos: 33





	The View Through Roots

**Author's Note:**

> So, this deals with the aftermath of the sexual relationship between Lan and Myrelle, which I would classify as probably abusive, though we don't have quite enough of Lan's perspective to say that for certain in canon. Still, power imbalance plus altered mental state = highly dubious consent. I have taken the route with this story that it was a traumatic experience for him, though not one Myrelle *intended* as traumatic, and not a thing that Lan himself recognizes as rape. It is not my intent to imply that the situation was in any way okay, only that Lan is likely to have some trouble / take some time to recognize that how she treated him was wrong.

Nynaeve lay on Lan's cloak with the hay beneath poking her in a hundred places, staring up through a tiny gap in the barn roof. Sunlight danced through motes of dust, and the sweet smell of straw was heavy in the air. Lan breathed like a bellows beside her, the rise and fall of his chest a blur at the edge of her vision, radiating heat like a furnace while to the other side her damp skin cooled.

_This is what it was like for those other women,_ she thought. Sneaking into barns, a little afraid, feeling something that was like shame but also delicious. It was  _not_ the same; Lan was her husband. They had a right to – to this sort of thing. And besides that it helped him, chased the chill from his eyes for a time. She thought – she hoped so hard it hurt – that it came back just a little more slowly, just a little lessened, each time. She had a perfectly valid reason for not exercising more restraint. 

It wasn't the  _only_ thing that brought life back into him, but could she afford to overlook any possible remedy? Of course not. 

He went still, beside her, and all her justifications drained away into absolute, stark  _terror_ at the thought of discovery. “What -”

“It's alright,” Lan said soothingly, relaxing in a way that was obviously deliberate. “No one is coming.” 

“But – you heard something?”

There was a pause before he said, “No. It was nothing.”

She could not have said exactly how she knew, but she knew. “It's _that woman_ , isn't it? Something you're feeling from her?”

But rather than going maddeningly dispassionate as he usually did at any mention of _bloody Myrelle_ , he looked . . . amused? Amused! Lan rolled toward her, onto his side, catching her up in his arms and holding her. Their foreheads nearly touched.

“It is,” he said, and there was an almost _smug_ note to his voice. She glared, refusing to relax into his embrace – what did he mean by it, looking like that while talking about _her?_ But her glower only seemed to amuse him further, his lips curving into a very wolfish smile. 

“ _That woman,_ ” Lan said, in a low voice, as if sharing a secret, “is very annoyed with you. I think you've hurt her pride.” 

Well, she supposed it was alright if he was pleased that Myrelle was annoyed. But beyond that, it made no sense – hurt her pride? She'd like to hurt more than the woman's bloody pride. “How can you know she's annoyed at  _me?_ ”

He said nothing, just raised a suggestive eyebrow and waited.

Oh. She flushed scarlet, at which he chuckled and his arms tightened. She wasn't sure she'd ever felt such a jumble of mortification and vindication in her life. And perhaps something else - an unfamiliar, wicked spark of a feeling.

“In that case,” Nynaeve said, face still aflame, but the rest of her no less so, in a very different way, “Can we annoy her again?”

***

But later, the words tumbled around uneasily in Nynaeve's head.  _I think you've hurt her pride._

She tried to convince herself that could mean any number of innocent – well, decent – well, less  _in_ decent things. The woman did have three other Warders of her own, reputedly all her lovers if not all her husbands. The comparison could have been to their . . . experiences . . . of Myrelle, felt through the bond. There was a decidedly vindictive appeal to that idea. 

But the simplest, most likely explanation was that Myrelle's pride was dented because Lan took more pleasure in Nynaeve than he had in Myrelle. The likeliest, most ordinary explanation was usually the right one; that had been one of her first lessons as a Wisdom's apprentice. Seeing plague in every flea bite was a sure way to make yourself useless, at best.

Well, it wasn't as though she hadn't guessed as much already. And Lan had chosen her, and preferred her, and was glad Myrelle knew it. He had been grieving, while Myrelle had him, not in his right mind, and Myrelle did hold his bond.

She . . . could have made him.

That was where her thoughts caught and spiraled. Light, she didn't  _want_ that – much as it hurt to think that Lan had lain with another woman by choice, the idea that he'd been forced was enough to make her want to be sick. 

_I think you've hurt her pride._ And that smug look. Lan was not a spiteful man; if anything, he was so fair it was infuriating at times. It was even more unthinkable that he'd be the kind of man to want to boast to others of his wife's . . . abilities . . . in that regard. 

No, to enjoy feeling Myrelle's own estimation of herself as a lover lowered, he'd need to have good cause.

Nynaeve had decided she could live with the idea that he had lain with Myrelle so long as Lan never confirmed it. They would simply never discuss it, and it would be like it had never happened. She didn't want to know.

But if it had been a thing that hurt him –  _if that woman had hurt him_ \- 

That, she did need to know. His hurts were hers to tend. She could bear knowing whatever she needed to.

***

“I didn't want her,” Lan said, in a voice as flat as she had ever heard. “But I didn't refuse her.”

They'd reached an inn, and by some miracle there had been enough empty rooms that she and Lan had one to themselves for once. He sat on the edge of a bed that was going to be far too short for him; she stood by the far wall next to the wash stand, barely two paces away. Not much of a room, but it was as good as a palace as far as she was concerned, just for being theirs – and she'd ruined it.

It had been a terrible mistake to ask. She'd been so careful in how she'd phrased it, tried so hard to keep her tone neutral – not angry, not jealous, just concerned for him. She even thought she'd  _managed_ it, mostly. 

But his eyes were colder, more bleak than they had been since before they'd wed. She'd thought asking him to speak of it would be like lancing a boil, but she'd been wrong – not in thinking that his time with Myrelle had hurt him, but in the nature of the injury. Not an infection to be drained away, but a wound barely closed, and her poking had only started it bleeding again. Never mind that she didn't hold his bond, she could practically feel the life and warmth draining out of him.

“She meant to save my life,” Lan went on. “It wouldn't have worked, but she meant well.”

“Thank you,” Nynaeve said, clinging to her braid as if it were a rope dangling her over deep water. “For telling me. I shouldn't have asked. I'm sorry.”

He gave her a small nod. “You had a right to know.”

She couldn't stand it anymore; she'd given him space, to ask the question, but now she crossed the room in two impatient strides and sat – chastely sideways - in his lap. She wrapped her arms around him and turned her face in to his chest. His heart beat steadily; his ribs expanded and relaxed with his breath.

After a moment, his arms went around her, and he began stroking her hair.

“I'm sorry,” she said again.

He didn't say anything, for what seemed like an unbearably long time.

Then, Lan said, “It's meant to remind a man that he's alive. It . . . didn't. Not with her.”

The words were halting, still in that awful flat voice, but for a moment his heart beat more quickly beneath her ear. His breathing didn't change at all. His hand kept stroking from the base of her skull down her braid, his fingers playing over the weave of it, as if counting the twists.

“She could make me . . . feel,” His pulse lurched again, a quick thump-thump, quickly back under control. “But shallowly.” He shook his head. “That frustrated her. She became . . . very creative. _That_ was funny, at least – or I thought it should be funny. Like recognizing something from a long way off. The pleasure was like that too.”

Nynaeve was amazed at how calm she was – she was listening to her husband describe making love to another woman, for Light's sake, she should be  _furious_ . But she wasn't; she hardly dared to breathe for fear he'd stop. This wound was poisoned after all.

For another long span he was quiet, just holding her, stroking her braid. She felt his pulse quicken before he spoke. “It made me hope for death. It would have been cruel to tell her, so I let it carry on. But to be cold and hollow even as my body responded to her – I was as good as dead. I wanted it to be done.”

She would _not_ weep. He didn't feel that way now, she knew he didn't. But he had been so badly wounded, in such pain, and she had not been there to help him. He'd had that _despicable_ woman instead. That arrogant, _idiot_ woman who couldn't tell – with his bond! - that she was doing more harm than good!

“When the Amyrlin sent me to you, I think I knew this was how it would go – that I wouldn't have the strength to deny you again. I knew it was what she intended. And I dreaded – you deserve so much more than a dead man. A corpse in your bed without the decency to lay still.”

Oh, Light. “You are _not -_ ”.

“No,” he interrupted, the hand that had been stroking her braid stilling for a moment to just cradle her head against his chest. “I knew the moment I saw that ship break apart, knowing you were on it. I'd never felt terror like that in my life, and when I found you alive – no dead man could feel as I did then.”

_And – in our bed -?_ She would  _not_ ask that! She would have  _some_ bloody shame! Besides, she knew the answer. It was the whole reason they were having this conversation in the first place. 

“It's still there,” he said, in a tone of caution. “That hole in place of Moiraine's bond.”

Nynaeve waited for a stab of jealousy that didn't come; oh, she'd still like to thrash Moiraine to the Blight and back for this and so much else, but she wasn't so irrational as to believe Lan shouldn't mourn her.

“It's still a gaping crater with the edge crumbling beneath my feet, but I can't be eager for the fall now. I don't want to leave you. I don't want to cause you grief.”

_You're causing me grief right now,_ she did not say. _You're a good man who deserves to live and be happy, and you will understand that if I have to beat it into your thick skull!_ But for now, if she could be enough reason for him to hang on, well, she would plant herself like a tree on the side of life and duty and let him tie as many ropes to her as he needed.

“You are very far from a corpse,” she found herself saying, though she thought her face might well catch fire.

He laughed, and it was a wonderful sound, rumbling in his chest. “How could I be, with you? My _wife_.” There was still such wonder in his voice when he said that; she felt a rush of warmth down her spine at the words. He leaned down, his cheek resting on the crown of her head, to murmer in low, heated tones. “My wife who burns like the Light made flesh.”

Oh, that was blasphemous, surely! And yet she felt like his words had set a match to tinder inside her. She looked up at him; if he had been only teasing -

He had not been teasing; her breath caught in her throat at the look on his face, and fire rushed over her skin. His lips were desperate on hers, and she shook as she scrambled around to straddle him. His hands clutched her hips and crushed her against him. She keened, then bit off the sound in mortification.

“Wards,” she gasped, even as his lips made their way down her neck, doing nothing for her ability to form words. “The walls – thin -”

“Be quick,” he growled, not pausing a moment in his attentions.

***

He was already gone from their bed when she woke the next morning; seeing to the horses, most likely. She washed and dressed and went to the stables, but she'd missed him there too – Mandarb was still in his stall, but with a feed trough full of oats and brushed to gleaming. Could Lan be at breakfast? She'd bypassed the inn's dining room, taking the servants' stairs down so as to avoid being caught up with either the Kin or the Aes Sedai.

The thought brightened her; it was a good sign, if he was hungry.

Mandarb snorted, nosing at the top of her head – so much for her tidy braid, then; well, it wasn't as if it remained tidy long on the road anyway. She turned and gave the horse an affectionate pat.

One of the grooms, working at the other end of the barn, stood in alarm. “M'lady, don't -”

He cut off when Mandarb failed to relieve her of a few fingers, and instead nuzzled into her palm. The groom looked completely baffled. Nynaeve raised a brow; the boy flushed and and went back to his work with embarrassed diligence.

“We understand one another, don't we?” Nynaeve murmured to the horse, who answered with a huff. She sniffed in agreement. “I wonder if you bit that horrid woman; I hope you did.” She gave the horse a significant look. “I know who actually kept him alive for me.”


End file.
